In the News

Feb032014

Freshman South Carolina Congressman Tom Rice said he is gaining new sponsors by the day for a U.S. House resolution that would allow legislators to take legal action against the president for “unlawful” executive orders.

Rice represents the state’s Seventh District, which includes Myrtle Beach.

Rice told South Carolina Radio Network on Monday that the Stop This Overreaching President Act has more than 80 co-sponsors — a number that has grown since President Barack Obama’s State of the Union last week where the president vowed to work without Congress if members remain gridlocked.

Rice said the president has overreached his executive powers on several executive orders including a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, one-year extension of substandard insurance policies, waiving welfare to work requirements, and granting deferred removal action for illegal immigrants.

“He has no authority to do that … to come and waive portions of the law,” Rice said. “That’s a tax (for the Affordable Care Act). If the president has the right to waive taxes or parts there of … does that mean the next president can say, ‘I think the maximum tax bracket is too high and I’m going to waive that’?… If the president can modify the income tax system that way, what does that say certainty in our economy? It creates a vast amount of doubt. And it’s certainly unconstitutional.”

The non-binding resolution only needs the House to pass it. Rice said that, while impeaching a president is always an option, he did not want to take his resolution to that extreme.

“That’s a far more radical remedy than what I’m asking for. What I’m asking for is that the president comply with the law,” Rice said.